Ritual Reportage

Friday, October 14, 2005

No. 3

CT: mission impossible - try to assert youruniqueness‚ through a uniform... demonstrate your individualitythrough your H&M sweater and Diesel Jeans, IKEAinteriors, the contents of your fridge..."oh sooriginal" the words i sewed across the ass of my pantsfor an exhibition I took part in called 'Try this onfor size'. Tongue-on-cheek?!...

If you are able to buy into 'exclusivity' what do youactually get at the end of the day? The worlds biggestpair of shoulder pads? ....It's Dynasty all overagain!

G: I was reading an interview with Susan Sontag todayI was interested by her anti-postmodernism stance astance against everything being equivalent. Capitalist ideology seems obsessed with this smoothingover of 'taste'. It presents itself as having so manypossibilities (many different types of shoulderpads!), new rituals yet at the same time stilldemanding categorization. By presupposing thisideology there is a chance to play - to revel in themargins. There is somewhere to speak from. - I kind ofunderstand your pop band as that..

CT: I am member of the artist group Mr Helium & theHoly Gliders‚. We are interested in authenticity andquestions around taste‚. Who has talent, what is good taste or indeed who shalltell us what is good taste? There is a liberatingquality of 'childish' fantasy over the adult (that isperhapsto say the mainstream critical) obsession withclassification and quality-control.

Mr Helium & the Holy Gliders - our live art band - gotits name from the first song we recorded "Ahejujha".Ahejujha attacks religious bigotry and 'from themargins‚ offers a new space for freedom(sexual, spiritual, creative...).

See Mr Helium and the Holy Gliders at glasgay GilbertandGrape are listening to Le Tigre this month.See Mr Helium and the Holy Gliders at

Live Reportage

Every second Thursday of the month we will be sending a three minute film to this blogg. People we meet will be given a list of rituals from which they choose one to perform.
We hope to create a sense of fictional continuity.

What interests
us about rituals is the opportunity for implicit multiple meanings, their 'ungrammaticalness'
and as a form of response.

GilbertandGrape

How we use the word ritual

We see ritual as
being a set of prescribed rules:
A specific place, which can be imaginary
Action that can be arbitrary
Context that can be immersed in a certain stillness/mood.

The ruling is public,
clear and social, the meaning may be or it may be indeterminate, private and
individual. Everyday actions like brushing teeth, wearing shoes, cooking a meal
can become the action in a ritual. By naming these actions in our rituals we
hope to bring attention to a connection that can be made regardless of place
and position or religion, but a position or notion that belong whilst moving
as an undefined.

Any type of
behaviour may be said to turn into a ritual when it is stylized or formalized,
and made repetitive in that form
(S.F Nadel 1953)

What interests
us about rituals is the opportunity for implicit multiple meanings, their ungrammatical
ness and as a form of response. We have talked about our collaboration being
something, which is a complex web of political viewpoints, and working through
performance rituals has allowed for an ambiguity of meaning and message
If we assume there must be a system to ritual or rules to organize its operation,
we might expect to recognize ungrammatical usage of the code, however
the ungrammatical is tolerated. Chaos, fragmentation, multiples, set amongst
clear set of prescribed rules describes our rituals. Prescribed rules and stylizations
are central to our work and the repetition of these even more so.